


An unlikely Hero

by ThymeSprite



Category: Original Work
Genre: Destiny, Dragons, Hero's Journey, Hurts So Good, Prophecy, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27190954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThymeSprite/pseuds/ThymeSprite
Summary: A weary vampire keeps on fighting after losing every best friend to death on their heroic quests.Through it all, the vampire is their best friend, their mentor. And eternally suffering.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	An unlikely Hero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicdrusilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicdrusilla/gifts), [Blue_Amber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Amber/gifts).



Immortality is not what it is made out to be. 

It promises all the time in the world, all the opportunities. That is why it is so seductive to mortals, for there is one thing mortals do not have in abundance. Time. There is always something more they wanted to do, more to see, more to experience. More they did not get around to doing. 

So they wish for more time, one more opportunity. Therefore, immortality, an eternity of opportunities, sounds like a dream come true. 

It is a lie. Immortality is a nightmare. It is suffering. 

Eternal suffering, making you wish you would die and giving you the knowledge that you will not. Of course, it is fun for a few years, decades even. But when you have seen your colleagues and friends die one by one, when you have seen your children die from old age… you realise the truth of it. 

Only then it is too late to repent, too late to go back. My master, the vampire who turned me hundreds of years ago (I forgot how long ago it actually was) tried to warn me. She told me of her heartbreak, of her never ending grief. 

But I was young, stupid…and so very mortal. I cast away her warnings only to lament forty years later. Maybe it was fifty. It did not matter then and it does not matter now. At the graves of my children I lamented, regretted my choice for immortality and against my family. Too late. 

But that day, I made another choice. If I was damned to wander this world until the end of time, I would try to help, I would learn, I would teach as best I could. 

So when the young knight boasted in the tavern that he would slay the dragon that kept killing the livestock and burning the crops, I knew he was out of his depth. Therefore, I joined him. 

He and his merry band of knights and hunters had had no idea what hunting a dragon actually meant and despite my best efforts, they perished. Every last one of them died to the perils of the journey or, finally, to the claws and fire of the dragon. The last of them was the young knight, the prince himself, succumbing to his wounds after he had dealt the dragon the killing blow. His last words were wasted on thanking me of all people, for helping him to avenge his beloved whom the dragon had killed. 

I pitied them both, for the prince had been a fool and the dragon had been struck insane by hunger and loneliness. Both fools died that day in agony, but the land celebrated and thrived with their livestock and fields safe. 

I could not stand their happiness, so I left. 

My long life had already taught me back then that the world was full of fools and slowly I realised that yet stupid, most of them were of good heart. They just did not know better. Like children. 

As I met the farmer who had lost his family to the ruthless brutality of bandits, I saw him and the able-bodied men of his village set out to find them and kill their leader, the self-proclaimed bandit king. We fought side by side, bled and suffered together until we finally found their camp, a fortress they had occupied. It took hours to fight through the narrow hallways. And it took all their lives in the end. 

Yes, the farmer killed the bandit king with his blade to his throat, but his many wounds were unclean and infected. He never saw his village again. 

As I left the province, the other villages rejoiced, for apparently the bandits had fled or found other hunting grounds. I did not correct them. Instead I left. 

I wandered and even though I was lost, I kept on going. There were always people I could help. 

The young woman who had fled her husband after he had beaten her I tried to smuggle out of the country, but her husband found us and, assuming we were lovers, attacked us. She killed him and died with a smile on her face. 

I did not stick around to listen to the ballads about the woman who had freed herself, but I heard she inspired a lot of others. Hopefully, most of them got to enjoy their freedom in life, not in death. 

The lawyer who rebelled against the tyranny of his king needed someone to help him write his manifesto, so we poured hours and hours of time, our very lifeblood into the ink. 

It only brought him to the gallows. 

When I passed the same city decades later, the freedom and justice he had fought for was in place, but he would never know. It was a shame. 

The priest who wanted his community to understand his holy words and to be free from unjust laws imposed by his church needed someone to discuss his ideas with, so we spent many a night merely talking. 

For his efforts, his belief, he was burnt at the stake. He never heard a sermon in his native tongue, so years later I sat in one on his behalf, even though God had forsaken me as much as I had forsaken Him. But this was not between Him and me, it was for my friend. I like to think that we both understood that. 

The woman who refused to be cowed and to keep her mouth shut, she needed someone to see behind her strong facade, someone on whose shoulder she could cry when it all became too much. So I dried her tears, spoke words of comfort and she found the strength to keep fighting. 

Only to be killed in bright daylight. The authorities did not care, but her community rose up and years later, their women were organised. It was not enough, but it was more than she had ever had. 

The frightened soldier who had never wanted to join the war would have laid down and died without a sound, but I almost dragged him onward, brought him to the encampment. Having survived that first day, he found heart in his comrades and fought with them, for them. 

Together we freed prisoners of war, but my friend was shot point-blank by the one guard I had failed to spot. The freed prisoners prayed for him, called him a hero. For his country he was a mere statistic and for me, he was a tragedy. My most recent failure. 

There were many more over the centuries and I remember all of their faces. They have haunted me all this time, staring at me with their dead eyes. 

At times I did not know how to go on, but whenever someone asked for help, I swore to myself that I would try just one more time. To save just one of my friends. 

I never did. Not one of them. 

They all died, without fail, and left me, the immortal, to carry their memory, to feel their loss. And to keep going. Just one more. Just one. 

This mantra was how I found myself next to a teenage girl walking up a mountain. 

“It’s just up ahead. Gotta be.”, she panted, studied her map and then nodded, “Yeah.” 

So we kept walking and as she shivered in the bitter cold, I gave her my coat. 

“But you’ll catch a cold!”, she protested, yet I merely shook my head, “No, you keep it. I’m warm.” 

I was not, I had been dead for hundreds of years. But that meant I would never die from a common cold while she might. I had to prevent that. 

She smiled and we kept walking, always up. 

“There it is!”, she called out and ran ahead. 

“Wait.”, I asked and only caught up to her enthusiastic dash at the barred door, “If there truly is toxic waste in there…” 

“There is!”, she said fiercely. As she reached for the door, I stopped her hand: “Then let me go in there. You film it on your phone and you will have proof.” 

“But…”, she began, yet I did not give her the chance to argue, I wrenched open the door and walked in, torchlight raised. She scrambled to get her phone working and at once we saw the irrefutable evidence. Barrels over barrels neatly labelled with the most dangerous warning signs modern chemistry knows. 

“How…could they do that?”, she whispered in horror, then snorted, “And leave the door unlocked?” 

It had been very much locked. But a simple lock was not nearly enough to stop a vampire. 

“Are you getting this?”, I asked, but my only answer was a gunshot. Its finality and brutality resounded in the cavernous space hidden deeply in the mountain. I watched in horror as my friend, once more, crumpled to the ground and lay dead. 

Her last words were a chuckle: “Video’s in the cloud, asshole. It’s out.” 

Whoever had attacked her shot her again and I stopped thinking. I ran at the man, hardly felt the bullets ripping through my body, shredding my flesh. All I had left now was instinct and it called for blood. 

Seconds later the security guard lay dead in his own blood. But so did my friend. I knelt next to her, knowing she was dead. And, curiously, I learned that a vampire, too, could die. 

Whether it was the extensive damage to my body or my broken heart, I did neither know nor care, but the world I knew and by now loathed faded, the pain lifted. 

I found myself in white nothingness, alone. Looking around, I saw no one. 

“Welcome home.” 

How had I missed her? She stood right in front of me, a gentle smile on her pale lips. 

“W-where am I?”, I stammered, stupidly. 

“Home.”, she replied, “Or you might call it Heaven. Depends on what you believe in.” 

“Heaven?”, I gasped, “No. I…no!” 

“Why not?”, she asked, still with that enigmatic smile on her lips. 

“I…”, the words would not come. Until the dam broke: “I failed them!” 

My voice echoed in the vast emptiness around us, it threatened to split my head as its meaning had rendered my heart eons ago: “All of them died! I saw them struggle and lose, I had to watch them die! I never saved them. Not one of them…” 

I broke down sobbing, remembering all the loved ones I had lost to my selfish wish to be immortal and all the friends I had lost to my own failure. I cried for every single one of them. 

“Oh, darling.”, she spoke, a cool hand on my brow like a refreshing drink of water, “You did not fail them. You helped them fulfill their destinies.” 

Rage rose in me: “Their destiny was to die?!” 

“Yes.”, she spoke and I felt the anger boil, but her voice was calm, “Their destiny was death, yours was life. To save all the people who came after them.” 

I blinked at her, showing that enigmatic smile again as she spoke: “The dragon longed for a swift death and the villages were safe. The bandits never sacked another farmstead, never killed again. Unnumbered women left marriages that would have slowly killed them, jurisdiction might not be perfect, but it is there to help people get justice, belief is free, oppressed people everywhere speak up and have allies now, those imprisoned have hope that they will taste freedom again. Your very world will have advocates fighting for her. All because of ordinary people who rose up to fulfill their destiny.” 

When I shook my head, she framed my face in her hands and smiled brightly as the sun: “All because you guided them there.” 

“But…my friends…” 

“They died, yes.”, she admitted with a solemn nod, “But hundreds, thousands lived. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. So they had to die. You had to suffer. I am sorry for that, but you accomplished so, so much. I am proud of you.” 

I cried, but realised that the faces of my friends did not haunt me. They had waited for me to join them. So I took her hand and accepted death, knowing I had done everything I could have. 

It was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This story has its origin in a little discussion with two lovely friends.   
> What if an immortal was the eternal Best Friend to a Hero, only to lose every single one to death at the end of their respective quest?  
> What if, in the end, after all his perceived failures, the immortal friend was the hero who kept on fighting, kept on hoping?  
> This story is the result. I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
